Agetech world investment, research and technology round-up

MINNESOTA-based Medtronic has agreed to acquire neurovascular technology company Scientia Vascular for US$550m.

Scientia’s neurovascular access devices are used to navigate the brain’s complex vasculature, helping prevent cognitive decline by treating conditions such as strokes and aneurysms.

The Scientia proposal is Medtronic’s second deal of the year, after the company announced an acquisition of CathWorks for US$585m in February.

Privately held Scientia was founded in 2007 by John Lippert, its current chief technology officer. It is based in Salt Lake City, Utah, where it employs over 300 staff.

Scientia has developed a micro-fabrication technology to help address challenges in navigating the cerebral vascular system that can make it difficult for physicians to reach the site of an occlusion or aneurysm.

The acquisition builds a foundation to support procedures across both hemorrhagic and acute ischemic stroke, said Linnea Burman, Medtronic’s president of its neurovascular business.

Singapore-based Immortal True Dragon has announced plans to initiate an investment programme in ‘radical life extension technologies’.

20 longevity start-ups

It says it is committed to driving breakthroughs in longevity science and healthy lifespan research, positing that ageing and death are ‘technological challenges that can be overcome through scientific innovation’.

To date, Immortal True Dragon has invested in over 20 industry startups, with a focus on four strategic areas:

Firstly, replacement and regeneration technologies, including pioneering research such as xenotransplantation, cryopreservation, and biological tissue replacement or regeneration.

Secondly, gene therapy and delivery methods, targeting the root causes of ageing and related diseases through gene therapy

Thirdly, neural and brain ageing reversal technologies, covering cutting-edge research such as neuronal regeneration, intervention in neurodegenerative diseases, and cognitive function enhancement, aiming to fundamentally delay and even reverse the brain ageing process;

Fourthly, regulatory arbitrage and compliance paths, accelerating the transformation and implementation of innovative therapies by leveraging policy differences among different jurisdictions in the approval and clinical access of anti-aging therapies.

Boyang Wang, founder of the US$40M AUM (Assets Under Management) fund said: “Whether it’s cutting-edge scientific research or creating a better environment for scientific research, we are committed to finding investment opportunities that can bring about real impact.”

Boomer Inflexion

Research which examines mortality trends by birth cohort, or decade of birth, found that the 1950s US Baby Boomers cohort represents an inflection point transition from general improvements in earlier cohorts to deterioration across later cohorts.

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) the research showed that in general, groups born before the 1950s in the US show improving mortality rates, while those born after showed declines.

While the Baby Boomer generation represented a transition generation, the team found declining mortality patterns for subsequent generations.

There’s bad news for other generations as well. Zooming in on the data revealed troubling trends for those born since 1970, with deteriorating patterns in deaths caused by cardiovascular disease, cancer, and external causes compared with their predecessors.

The research concludes by saying ‘there is no easy answer as to why the US is struggling with mortality’.

A handful of tiny molecules circulating in the blood may help identify which older adults are most likely to survive the next two years, researchers report.

In a study of more than 1,200 people 71 and older, six small RNA molecules in the blood, called piRNAs, predicted short-term survival with up to 86%

“These RNAs are linked to survival,” and the analysis suggests they may also influence whether someone survives, says rheumatologist Virginia Byers Kraus of Duke University.

PiRNAs, short for piwi-interacting RNAs, help regulate genes involved in development, tissue repair and immune function. Research in roundworms shows that reducing piRNAs can double life span, and though widely studied in animals, their role in human aging has remained unclear.

While the results are exciting, those simulations should be interpreted cautiously, says Yale University computational biologist Raghav Sehgal.

The analysis assumes extreme changes in piRNA levels that may not be biologically feasible or safe.

At this stage, Sehgal says, the piRNA patterns probably reflect short-term health risks or frailty rather than gradual biological aging, so the test is not yet ready for clinical use.

Kraus and her team plan to explore piRNA patterns across people ages 30 to 100 and test whether interventions such as the diabetes drug metformin or GLP-1 drugs could modify RNA levels and improve health outcomes.

Mirror, mirror…on the wall

Wearables can currently help monitor your heart rate, blood oxygen and the like, but the next generation of wellness and anti-ageing devices promise to deliver something radically different from your smartwatch, highlights a gadget industry publication.

New wellness devices, such as the Withings Body Scan 2 and the NuraLogix Longevity Mirror, can check an holistic range of medical measurements, such as; arterial stiffness, vascular age, and cardiovascular risk.

These ‘longevity stations’ examine your long-term health risks by analyzing biomarkers linked to cardiovascular health, metabolic function, nerve integrity, and cellular ageing.

One of these; The NuraLogix Longevity Mirror, involves standing in front of it for 30 seconds, whilst its Transdermal Optical Imaging tech analyzes facial blood-flow patterns.

This allows it to estimate cardiovascular health, metabolic function, stress, and physiological age. This data is fed into an AI, trained on hundreds of thousands of patient records, which can then produce a Longevity Index score, along with personalized wellness suggestions.